The very first body building contest to be held in American soils was a spectacular event and very significant to modern day body building. This innocuous occasion was at the spectacular Madison Square Garden in New York on January 16, 1904. During the colorful pioneering event, it was the renown body building legacy, Al Treloar, who ended up winning the thousand dollar cash prize up for grabs. The esteemed panel of judges unanimously declared him the most muscled man in the entire world. A film by Thomas Edison was to be launched fourteen days later chronicling Treloar’s winning style and pose.

The film was itself a significant expression and record of American body building. Edison had actually already created successfully produced two long films that featured Eugene Sandow as the distinguished father of body building. It was the American Edison, who created and produced the three first screened documentaries films which featured the new trade of body building both as a sport and as an art. It was not until the early years of the 20th Century that a team comprising of Charles Atlas and Bernarr Macfadden, that a promotion campaign of a body building contest was done across America. In modern body building discourse however, the body building icon credited with propelling the American body building industry to monumental fame is Alois Swaboda. Swaboda was a mentor to Charles Atlas. In fact, Atlas is claimed to have publicly declared that everything he knew in body building was learnt from Swaboda.

By mid 1970, the American body building industry gained voluminous amounts of publicity which positively changed the fate of the sport forever. Most of this worldwide publicity is single handedly credited to the multiple-record-holder world body building champion and now US Govenor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. His 1977 film titled Pumping Iron was a worldwide success that sold body building to millions of funs, for example. It is important to note about the sports regulation in this decade, mainly because the International Federation of Body Builders (IFBB) dominated in the regulation of body building. The AAU had already retreated to a passive corner. Then came the National Physique Committee (NPC) formed by Jim Manion after resigning from the chairmanship of the AAU. Today, NPC stands in a class of its own as a body building regulatory body that adapts and perpetually transforms itself to remain the single most successful and organized in the America body building industry, although still an amateur arm incorporated within the American IFBB charter.

The American bodybuilding industry continued on a path of consistent growth until it faced a momentary but significant set back in the mid 1980s. At first, AAU stopped sponsoring body building contests in 1999. Further controversies arose from the abuse of anabolic steroids by body builders. To combat this problem, IFBB enacted stiff doping tests covering all known steroids while simultaneously banning all performance enhancing substances. But body builders continued using steroids especially to prepare for major championships. Anabolic steroids became a publicly debate especially on the issue of illegalizing them. The US Congress in 1999 finally enacted the Anabolic Steroid Control Act to classify anabolic steroids as Controlled Substances.

These and other small setbacks did not however deter growth of the industry. Actually at the beginning of this century, the IFBB made an attempt to make body building recognized an Olympic sport. Though IFBB obtained IOC membership in 2000, Olympic recognition of body building still remains controversial and unsuccessful. But like anything American, the future holds better opportunities.

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